


TONIGHT: Live at the S.H.I.E.L.D.!

by AcidArrow



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Clint Barton & Darcy Lewis Friendship, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton-centric, Creepy Brock Rumlow, Darcy Lewis's iPod, Deaf Clint Barton, Drummer Clint Barton, F/M, Gen, M/M, Maximoff Twin Feels, Multi, Past Brock Rumlow/Clint Barton, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Pietro Maximoff Sleeps With Everything, Polyamory, Steve Rogers is Not a Virgin, Take Your Fandom to Work Day, Threesome - F/M/M, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Touring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 18:56:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6483154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcidArrow/pseuds/AcidArrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Promoter Steve Rogers and his husband, Sam, own one of the hottest rock venues on the Sunset Strip, and tonight they're hosting a showcase for local music giants Sony Entertainment and Stark Records, featuring three of the best independent concept bands in North America: Human Spiders, Red Skull and the Hydra Trash Party, and -- last but definitely not least -- The Avengers! </p><p>Follow some of your favourite Marvel characters through an alternate reality that explores what happens behind the scenes of a touring band's gigs -- everything including the press interviews, sound checks, dealing with arrogant industry execs, dealing with even MORE arrogant musicians, bumping into old flames, surviving on fast food, and even desperately looking for somewhere to 'do' your boyfriend when you have a second's downtime. </p><p>There will never be ANY rest for the wicked, and the MOST wicked of us all work in the entertainment industry. ;) Enjoy my multi-chapter, multi-pairing entry for Take Your Fandom To Work Day 2016!</p>
            </blockquote>





	TONIGHT: Live at the S.H.I.E.L.D.!

**Author's Note:**

> A great big thanks to ~leftennant for Beta-reading for me! Also thanks to ~miin, ~bulmaveg_otaku, ~wheresarizona, and ~dresupi for putting up with my bouncing ideas off of them...

“Hey so, I’m looking at a photo of Buck’s band right now on their Instagram, and I’m wondering… is there any way I could make sure I have the bed to  _ myself  _ tonight?”

Fortunately enough for the staff and patrons of the _ S.H.I.E.L.D. _ on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, business partner and bar manager Sam Wilson-Rogers had a fairly decent sense of humour. He poked his head up from where he was restocking the fridge with coolers, peering over the bar at where his husband was working at a table on his laptop, the only other person currently inhabiting the six hundred-person live music venue. Usually filled to the rafters with sweaty bodies and overwhelmingly loud with scratchy guitar, live drums, and the din of hundreds of voices all straining to be heard over one another, the building was extremely eerie when it was closed -- a feeling that even seven years of owning and operating couldn’t shake.

“Let me guess,” said Sam, holding his half-crouched position in case Steve happened to glance back at him. “Tall blond?”

“Tall blond.” Steve nodded firmly, not tearing his eyes away from the screen. “Did that weird thrifty-vintagey-store up the street ever get back to us with a ticket count for tonight?”

“Yeah, MJ called. She shifted about sixty, she’ll bring the cash in tonight.”

“Excellent. We’re gonna hit capacity.” 

“All pre-sales?”

“No, but it’s a Friday night. We’ll get about two hundred extra just from foot traffic.” Steve double-clicked on the trackpad and scrolled for a few more minutes before finally swivelling around to face the other half of the business.

“We’re gonna be busy. I told Rhodey to bring some extra guys though, so it should be fine.”

“Yeah, right.” Sam snorted a little and shook his head, going back to restocking the coolers. “You keep tellin’ yourself that, man.”

“I’m sorry, did I wake up this morning in an alternate dimension where  _ Iron Patriot _ aren’t the best event security team in the business, or something?”

“Oh no, Rhodey’s the man.” Sam closed the fridge door and stood up, collapsing the cardboard box methodically with his hands as he spoke. “I’m just questioning now whether you’re still the best  _ promoter  _ in the business, or not.”

Steve raised one perfect, gold eyebrow into a delicate arch above his left eye. “Okay. This should be good. I’m all ears, Sammy.”

The bar manager just stared at him, as if the trepidation of the moment and the acidic amusement in his gaze was enough of an answer on its own. Eventually, he responded simply, “... Red Skull and the Hydra Trash Party.”

The blond man held his eye contact, not moving or responding. After a while, Sam laughed and broke their stare, shaking his head as he leaned forward on the bar.

“Red Skull and the Hydra mother-fucking  _ Trash Party _ .” He took a few moments to catch his breath, the unamused look his husband was giving him not having gone unnoticed even as he struggled with giggles that, despite his annoyance, Steve still found adorable. 

“Man, you are  _ insane _ , Rogers. You know, this is why I married you --  _ this shit _ right here. Only  _ you _ would book Red Skull and the Hydra Trash Party when you weren’t drunk, bribed, or looking for a quick and easy way to cash in on the building’s insurance policy.”

Finally understanding what Sam was getting at -- which was actually quite the chore considering he’d been up until four in the morning working on last-minute promotion and communications -- Steve broke his frown into a smile and shook his head.

“Come on, Sam, it’s all hype. Smoke and mirrors. It’s part of their stage show.”

“Well, tell that to Scott. He booked them last month at  _ Pym’s _ , they tore the place up. Did like, seven hundred bucks’ worth of damage?”

“Oh, please.”

“And you know that lead singer’s got statutory rape cases comin’ out the yin-yang, right?”

Steve sighed, resting his elbow on the table so that he could cradle his head in his hand. “Look, Sam,” he said, in that way he did when he was about to admit to something that he didn’t entirely agree with and wasn’t entirely proud of, “I didn’t want to book them.  _ Trust _ me, I didn’t want to book them. But they’re in Hollywood tonight, I heard about it  _ yesterday _ , and it was between here and the  _ Go-Go _ , and they’d already gotten both Stark and Sony on board. And I figured that, to get Buck’s band in front of two major record labels, putting up with a shitty band for five hours isn’t really much of a sacrifice for us to make.”

Sam’s eyes warmed as he watched his husband struggle with his internal moral compass. The two of them hadn’t seen Steve’s childhood friend in at least a year, and things with the band had really been taking off. A few broken light fixtures and quick paint touch-ups wasn’t a huge price to pay in order to help them get a leg up… even if it was just putting them in front of the right eyes for long enough that the name made an impression on their retinas. 

The silence had lasted too long. Steve raised his head, pain all over his face as his vocal tone begged for forgiveness. “I’ve spoken with their manager. And I told him that if anything happens tonight, if his band are responsible for any damage to my property or patrons, I will personally take their frontman by the _ balls _ , lift him up over my head, and throw him  _ clean through _ the front window of my venue.”

Sam’s smile twisted coolly into a grin. “You’re so sexy when you’re all righteous and riled up.”

Steve snorted and slid off of his stool, closing his laptop and turning to lean over the bar so that he could look more closely at his husband. “I promise you, if anything happens tonight, I will make it up to you.”

Sam studied him with a stern look on his face. He was so sweet and charmingly boyish, his blond hair askew where he hadn’t yet brushed it today, a habit he got into on weekends or whenever there was a big show that night. Leaning on his arms on the counter like that, staring up at him with huge crystal-blue eyes, his face wasn’t a face Sam could really say no to.

“If anything happens tonight, you _ will _ make it up to me,” he agreed, craning his head down to kiss the other man chastely on the forehead. “But how about instead we just keep an eye on those shitbags and make sure  _ nothin’ _ happens?”

Steve grinned, and when Sam came down again, this time he made sure the kiss landed on his lips. “Deal.”

* * *

“I said take exit Eight  _ A _ , not Eight  _ B _ !”

“You said  _ B _ !”

“I said A!  _ I’m _ supposed to be the deaf one, and I’d appreciate it if you stopped stealing my thunder.”

“Listen, Ringo -- you said B, I heard B, so I ignored A.”

“Why would I say B when the futzing map  _ clearly  _ says A!? I’m not just gonna make shit up! I’m not just gonna be like aww shit, son, I’ve got the best goddamn prank in the world when we’re already twenty minutes late for load-in, I’m gonna pretend it’s the  _ second _ exit and then  _ laugh _ when she misses the  _ first _ exit ‘cuz we gotta go around the _ long  _ way!”

“I swear to fucking God,” came Bucky’s voice from the seat behind the squabbling pilot and co-pilot, heralding that the bassist had finally removed his earbuds and his presence had rejoined them in the van, “if you both don’t shut up, I’m gonna turn this entire fucking _ tour  _ around.”

Rolling her eyes behind her oversized sunglasses, Darcy stuck her arm back out the window and did her best to ignore Clint’s mutterings about the map on his phone having to recalculate and how he didn’t understand how his service could suck so bad when they were in the middle of  _ Los futzing Angeles _ . She would much rather have Bucky as her co-pilot, given how inept and ineffective Clint was at using the Google Maps app, but he’d been working on lyrics for a co-write for the past six hours, since they had left the motel that morning. How  _ anyone _ could write lyrics as beautiful as the ones he came out with while Pietro and Clint were screaming  _ why’d you have to go and make things so complicated? _ at the top of their lungs because it just so happened to come on the radio, she would never be able to understand. 

“Okay, okay,” Clint was saying, holding his map out for her to see, “so take exit Nine B, it’s gonna loop us ‘round from above.”

Darcy scoffed, shooting him a look over the top of her sunglasses. “Exit Nine what now?”

“Nine  _ B _ ,” said Clint, not going to any lengths whatsoever to retain any of the sarcasm from his voice. The drummer slouched back down into his seat, which was reclined as much as Bucky would allow him to, resisting the urge to put his Chucks up on the dashboard as the cross-breeze from the windows tousled his short hair about. 

“Hey, guys, I got an email from the venue, apparently they found a second support to replace  _ First Class _ .” 

“Which venue?” asked Darcy. “Tonight?”

“Yeah, Steve managed to find another band. Hang on, he gave me a link to check --  _ OH FUCK OFF, NO FUTZING WAY, THOSE FUTZING MOTHER-FUCKERS _ !!!” Clint’s phone hit the dash, but thankfully she was used to driving with Pietro and Clint throwing Twizzlers back and forth at each other, so the sudden sound and motion didn’t startle her all that much. 

“What?” she and Bucky asked in unison as she indicated for their exit, trying to simultaneously read what was on his screen where the phone had landed in the footwell of the old six-passenger van. 

“Fucking -- the support band!  _ FUCK _ !” 

“Who is it?”

“Guessing it’s someone we know?”

Clint growled, jerking forward against the seat belt in order to snatch his phone up from the footwell. “It’s my  _ fucking _ ex’s band, these absolute dickshites who play shitty wank-metal and fuck underage girls.”

“Wait, which ex?” asked Bucky, screwing his face up as if trying to partner their drummer with another musician in the California area in his brain. “The one with the awesome car?”

“No, the one with the awesome abs, right?” Darcy ignored the vicious look Clint shot her, returning her eyes to the road and placing both hands back on the wheel. “No, I know the guys. They’ve got some… really awful, way-too-long, Fall Out Boy song title name, or something. Skull Fucker and the Fortress of Solitude, or something?”

“Oh, wait, those guys,” said Bucky, not sounded overly impressed. “Yeah, they did something with Rock Sound a few months ago. Apparently their live shows are gnarly.”

“I’m gonna need directions soon, Clint,” Darcy piped up, shooting him a smile as an afterthought. “Not that I wanna interrupt your rage.”

“Yeah, sorry. Um. Turn right here, on this street.” Clint rolled his eyes. “Apparently Steve’s got some ‘good news’ for you or somethin’, man,” he tossed over his shoulder, “but he wants to tell you when we get in. Babe -- get onto Highland Ave, here?”

“This is literally the worst place in the world to drive,” Bucky said deadpan, as he watched the traffic on the confusing roads through the window. “Except maybe for Jersey.”

“At least you guys don’t have to do it again in an hour,” Darcy griped, rolling her eyes. “ _ Twice. _ ”

“I wonder how the Wonder Twins are getting on, anyway?” Clint mused aloud, looking for anything to distract him from the fact that he would be sharing a venue with the  _ one _ musician on the planet (besides perhaps Kanye West) he wanted to see drown in a bucket of their own tears, vomit, and/or faeces. 

“Well, Pietro was in a pretty chirpy mood when we dropped them off,” said Darcy with a grin, “so I’m willing to bet they’re having a pretty damn good time.”

* * *

 

“So,  _ The Avengers _ have gained a lot of notoriety with fans online as a concept band, yes?”

Wanda enjoyed giving press interviews. As much as the thriving, pulsing, deafening atmosphere of a live show and the hurry-up-and-wait panic of driving six-to-ten hours in a day was an addictive lifestyle to lead, there was something calming and soothing about sitting in silence with her ideas, her feelings, and a well thought out question or twelve. 

“We have, yes.” On a normal show day, she would turn up at the venue in her torn yoga pants and a cut-up tee-shirt until time dictated that she should change into her stage outfit, but on occasions where they had press beforehand, she would have to do the wiggle-butt dance of squirming into her tight leather pants in the backseat of the van. Thankfully, both she and Clint had perfected the art of applying makeup in a moving vehicle, and her appearance was currently as pristine as it would be were she about to set foot on stage, right down to the blood-red lipstick and smoky eyeshadow hidden beneath a curtain of tousled, chestnut locks.

“The concept was very important to us, when we first formed the band. My brother and I have known these characters as alter-egos since we were little children, and we wanted to tell a story. To us that is very much what music is about -- telling a story. Inciting emotion.”

“And what is that concept, may I ask?” 

Wanda smiled, in that way she always did when people asked. It was hard to explain in detail the innermost workings of one’s mind. 

“Superheroes,” she said simply, her cheeks dimpling as the blogger returned her amused, interested grin with one of his own. “We are superheroes, all four of us. We came together to protect the Earth from anything that could want to harm it. And that is what we do.”

“When you aren’t being rockstars?” the blogger chuckled, and Wanda laughed too. She liked him -- he seemed sweet, kind, and genuine, much older than she had expected him to be, but she was just grateful that the interview wasn’t going to turn into a dick-waving contest between Pietro and some twenty-year-old wannabe journalist. The interview itself had interested her from the start though; the blogger, Doctor Banner, was a music therapist who ran a website dedicated to exploring the correlations between music and psychology.

“So, how many superheroes are in  _ The Avengers _ ?”

“Four of us, right now,” replied Wanda. “Myself, the Scarlet Witch. My brother, Pietro, who we call Quicksilver. And then we also have the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye.” 

“We are sort of -- kooky quartet, yes?” chimed in Pietro, who was sprawled on the other end of the leather couch in the doctor’s office where the interview was being held. His lean, toned, runner’s body was wrapped in beautifully screen-printed athletic wear in various shades of blue and lightning bolts of grey, his own ‘superhero’ getup. Wanda rolled her eyes when she spoke, but said nothing; Pietro liked to exaggerate his accent during interviews, mostly because he got bored easily. Sometimes, she had to wonder if her brother took any of this seriously at all.

Bruce nodded, checking his clipboard, which had his questions on them. A Zoom H4n sat on the circular, glass coffee table between his chair and their couch. The window was open, a gentle breeze fluttering the blinds as the nearly nonexistent sound of traffic filtered in, none of it loud enough to be picked up by the handheld recorder. 

“So, you released an album last summer, yes?”

“Yes, we did…  _ The Age of Ultron _ .”

“And this was the next chapter in your characters’ journey?”

“Yes, my character met a man who had a deep need within him to save the world. Only he was lost. While he tried to protect the world, instead he built something that couldn’t tell the difference between saving it and destroying it. In the end, he had to turn against his own creation to do the right thing.”

Bruce nodded again, more insistently this time; he seemed to be hanging onto her every word, his foot jittering a little as he chewed on the end of his pen. “So, do you feel, when writing this album, that the concept came from your own  _ personal _ struggles? Or was it a more generalized view of the world?”

“Um, I think both?” Wanda glanced over at her brother, who nodded in agreement. “I think that nobody creates things with the intent of destroying something. Everybody who creates always wants their creation to do good things, but sometimes we get so caught up in the beauty of our creation and the potential it has that we forget all of the negative things it is capable of.”

“Everybody has their own inner demons that they have to fight with,” Pietro piped up, his extremely exaggerated accent dulling ever so slightly at the promise of sincere and serious philosophical discussion, “and sometimes, when you’re trying to do the right thing, those demons can come out and taint it. But what you do, it is powerful.”

“Yes,” agreed Wanda with a firm nod. “We definitely wanted to convey the importance every single person on this planet has to the fabric of fate. Anybody can change the world. Everybody has that power.”

“Is that the message you put across in the songs?”

“I think so,” said Wanda. “And of course, there’s a story behind it too, which we are telling in the music videos. Also, our roadie and drummer are writing a comic book based on the story, so we are excited to unveil that.”

Pietro snorted. “Speak for yourself.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” But Wanda chimed in, waving her hands and laughing, before he could ask any further questions.

“No, no, my brother… Pietro is perhaps a little sour because we wrote a song --”

“We were drunk,” Pietro interjected.

“Yes, yes, we were drunk, but anyway, we wrote a song where --”

“And high.”

“Yes, Pietro, but we wrote a song where Quicksilver actually dies to save Hawkeye. It was a terrible idea and we were so drunk, but the song was so good that the next morning we told him sorry Pietro, we are keeping this song. Quicksilver is going to have to die.”

She and Bruce shared another hearty laugh while Pietro rolled his eyes and sighed on the other end of the couch, ruffling his shaggy, bleached mohawk. After a while, they petered off into tired sighs of amusement, and Bruce checked his clipboard again. 

“So, the two of you are from Sokovia, and you came to America at a young age I understand?”

“Yes,” said Wanda, her eyes darting sideways to look at her brother. He was perking up a little, watching the blogger between spread fingers from where he was sprawled on the couch. This… was no doubt where he would start talking. She knew what was coming; walk into an interview with an accent from a foreign country, and expect thousands of questions about where you were from and why you came to America.

It had annoyed the twins so much that Pietro had just come up with his _ own _ way of dealing with it.

“Now, I understand there’s quite a lot of conflict on the streets out there,” Bruce was saying, in that adorably respectful way that he had been throughout the entire interview. In a way that actually made Wanda feel bad for him, given what was no doubt about to chime in from her right. “Do you think that growing up in that sort of an environment really affected how you grew up, and this musical and conceptual path that you both decided to travel?”

“Weeeeeeeeell,” Pietro piped up, and Wanda sighed and slowly sat back, reaching for the half-drained bottle of water on the coffee table with her name scrawled in Sharpie across the label. He cracked his fingers and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his accent suddenly far too thick to be genuine once again.

“See, where we grew up in  _ old country _ ,” the guitarist said, and Bruce’s warm brown eyes flickered over to Wanda uncertainly as if he wasn’t sure whether or not he was supposed to take her brother seriously, “pain and suffering and death were as commonplace to us as... Twinkies and Starbucks are to the people of America.”

Wanda rolled her eyes at Bruce, smirking a little over the top of her water bottle.

“Our father, he was  _ great _ man. Man of much magical, superhuman power, a power that runs in our family.” Pietro’s long, slender fingers danced and waved about in front of him, as if pushing and pulling imaginary items through the air. “He can... control metal. Anything metal, anything... magnetic. He can control it. And my people, they called him…” 

The man’s eyes slid skyward for a half-second, just long enough to come up with something ridiculous.

“... Magneto.”

“Magneto?” asked Wanda, turning her smug grin on her brother now.

“Magneto. Such a great... great man.” Pietro huffed his chest out in a prideful sigh. “But, sadly, he was also a psychotic terrorist and wanted to take over the world, so we fled to America to escape his wrath.”

Pietro sat back on the couch, raising both eyebrows at the two of them, as if to signal he was done. Bruce’s eyes flickered back and forth between the two siblings, not sure how to take any of that. He laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck.

“Uhhhh... yes, um... that... that’s sort of what I was getting at.” Bruce looked down at his clipboard, clearly distracted and thrown off of his game. Wanda felt bad for him, shooting Pietro a glare and shaking her head a little. He smirked back.

“So, um, yes... before you go…” He cleared his throat, and focused back on the vocalist. “You’re playing in Hollywood tonight, I believe, at the  _ S.H.I.E.L.D. _ ?”

“Yes, we are very excited,” confirmed Wanda with a nod. “The owner and promoter are old school friends of our bassist, so it should be a fun evening. It’s a showcase of concept bands promoting concept albums.”

“And I heard that pop-rock giants  _ First Class _ from New York state had to pull out last minute, yes?” said Bruce, sympathetically. “Something to do with hitting bad weather in Colorado?”

“What’s ironic,” Pietro mused aloud, “is that their bassist Ororo posted something on Twitter about betting Logan fifty bucks this’d happen.”

“Yes, it is quite upsetting, we haven’t seen them in a few years,” Wanda said, sadly. “But we received an email this morning and the promoter found another band, Red Skull and the Hydra Trash Party?”

“... Ah.” Bruce drummed his fingers against the clipboard. “Yes, I’ve... I’ve heard of them. It should be... quite the evening, I’m sure.” He chuckled nervously, in a way that caused both siblings to exchange a mildly concerned, almost telepathic glance.

“I’m... sure it will,” Wanda replied with a polite smile, nodding her head a little. “We have three incredibly talented bands coming together for one night to celebrate concept artistry in the alternative rock genre of music, and I for one couldn’t be more excited for it.”

Bruce smiled. “Excellent, well, I wish you both the best, and please extend that to your bandmates as well! And I just have one more question before you go, a question for you, Wanda, if that’s okay?”

Wanda nodded. “Of course, please.”

“If I were a character in your universe,” the blogger asked, grinning a little shyly to himself, “would I have what it takes to be a superhero?”

The brunette pursed her lips for a moment, studying the much older man in front of her with a sincere, honest, open, yet scrutinizing gaze. “Hmm. Please.” She motioned for one of his hands, taking it between both of her own, pressing her soft fingertips into the tendons running along the back of it. Slowly, her fingers massaged the skin, eyes closing and revealing the rich, beautifully-blended hue of her crimson pigment eyeshadow. 

Silence passed for a few moments, and Wanda smiled, squeezing his hand.

“You have a great strength inside of you, Bruce,” she said without letting him go, opening her eyes and allowing them to meet his warmly. “A strength even you aren’t aware of yet. And if you are able to tap into that strength, to own it? Nothing will ever be able to stand in your way. Superheroes are not born, Bruce, they are made, and,” she added as an afterthought, her smile bright and genuine, “I would stand and fight alongside you any day.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tumble with me! I take art and fic prompts!  
> [~acidarrowguy](http://acidarrowguy.tumblr.com)


End file.
